Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Apostle Peter, asked whether he knew Jesus, denied that
he knew him after being arrested a total of three times in one morning. Mitt
Romney can do St. Pete 11 better in a day’s time it seems.

Asked by reporters today at his “Storm Relief Events” – another
phrase for “Campaign Rally of Dubious Taste on the Heels of a Natural Disaster”
about his comments favoring state and local takeover of FEMA oversight and
humanitarian aid in the wake of natural disasters – or even privatization of
FEMA – Romney declined to reply.

UPDATE: On my morning drive-by today I noticed that the "No Nehls" signs have mysteriously walked away from the early voting site. That is Fort Bend politics at its most usual.

Driving by my new favorite early voting location in Fort Bend County today I espied a campaign sign that I thought I’d never see again.

But there it was.

Here is the miserable excuse for a photograph that I took of it. Honestly, the world took a step backward when we put digital cameras in Smartphones.

Remember that sign? That was a sign that the Craig Brady for Sheriff people put out to oppose Troy Nehls in the Republican primary. A sign that did Brady no good because he got trounced by Troy Nehls in the primary, and is now faced off against Michael Ellison, the Democratic candidate.

If you need a refresher, and a better view, here is a close up.

Yep, that sign.

That sign which was a joke back in the primary but is true now. Troy Nehls might be a heck of a guy and a good law enforcement officer. I wouldn’t ever claim the opposite to be the case. What I question though, as should anyone who votes in this election, is whether there would ever be a single incident where there might be a conflict of interest between Sheriff Nehls and Constable Nehls, because Trever Nehls is going to be the 4th Precinct Constable in Fort Bend County, and there are levels of oversight that overlap in the county.

So while claims of nepotism on the part of the Brady campaign back in the primary were a laughable case of the pot calling the kettle black, this is definitely not.

So really, a vote for Michael Ellison is a vote against keeping it all in the family.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Students: which of the two presidential candidates would best serve the people of the mid-Atlantic states today, tomorrow and for days to come with the approach and passing of one humongous hurricane, Hurricane Sandy?

But wait, before you make your call, consider the following facts. Hurricane Sandy stretches over a total diameter of 900 miles and its eyewall is making landfall in southern New Jersey as I type this.

Hurricane Ike was similarly large, and came to shore in Houston about this time in 2008.

At that time, President Bush was still in charge of FEMA and it was literally weeks before power was fully restored to the hardest hit areas of the city.

Here is what former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has said about funding disaster relief in the federal government were he to become president.

"We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all."

Doesn’t that just give you goose bumps? Mitt Romney is really really concerned about the federal debt to the extent that he thinks it is immoral and makes no sense to put forth a federal effort to save lives and restore order. Local authorities and, get this, private industry, are in a far better position to do this important work.

Ask the people of New Orleans how reliance on the state and local authorities - and private industry – worked for them when the levees failed.

This is what President Obama did about federal disaster relief for Louisiana in response to Tropical Storm Isaac when he signed an emergency disaster relief order earlier this year:

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says the authorization will coordinate relief efforts and provide federal funds for local emergency and relief efforts. FEMA says the measure authorizes the use of ‘equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.’”

And so students, choose who you would want to be at the helm when the gods wreak their destruction on our country. Mitt Romney, the big picture guy who doesn’t want to sell our children’s future for stuff like saving lives and property in the here and now, or Barack Obama, who is looking out for the here and the now, looking out for our safety security and public order.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Fox News and Republican operatives are working fast and furiously on the
social media networks to spew their lies and innuendoes over what truly happened in Benghazi that night last month when al-Qaeda terrorists used a
non-violent anti-American demonstration in Benghazi to invade the consulate
compound and kill 4 Americans, including the American ambassador.

The risks outshine the rewards. We very probably won’t know
for months, if ever, what happened, and who knew what happened and when did
they know it. All of this is now the subject of idle speculation on the
internet, but only somel of it is meant to fire up the base. The base is
already fired up and in all probability has already voted.

No, the goal of this whispering campaign that seems to have
taken the social media pages by storm is to nudge the true fence-sitters in the
election to vote for Mitt Romney, or at the very least, not to vote for Barack
Obama. Because in truth, it has come down to just a couple of percent of the
voters one way or the other. And the advantage will always fall to the biggest
liar in the argument.

Lies that go unanswered get heard time and time again. Rock
meet hard place. The only thing one accomplishes by answering a bald-faced lie
is to lend credence to the lie. To lend authority to the liar. So all of these
speculations on what might have been done, who might have known what, and why
did Barack Obama just stand and watch them kill his ambassador on a 52 inch
television screen (OK, maybe only a 44 inch screen)are meant to raise doubt where none existed
before. These detailed accounts of what our government knew and when they knew
it are completely uncited.

Bottom line, if these charges were credible, where are the witnesses? The truth is that there is not one witness to all of these speculated
events. Not even a "he said."

Republicans have effectively used the art of lying in past
Octobers, and have even used them effectively among themselves (ask John McCain
about his black daughter). October surprises are anything but surprises
anymore. Even using the tragic deaths of Americans in harm's way is not beyond these vile accusers.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Here is the CNN sound bite with Piers Morgan interviewing
former governor John Sununu, a Romney campaign surrogate, when he congratulated
Powell for endorsing the President because he, and both of them are
African-American. On the end is commentary on the importance of focusing in on
this nonsense.

Here is what I know about African-Americans who vote for
Barack Obama. They vote for the president because he is a Democrat. They vote
for the president because they perceive him as being more fair-minded to the
less well-off. And they vote for the president because he is also
African-American.

John Sununu congratulated Colin Powell for his support of
the president because he is black. That was, of course a backhanded way of
saying that Powell, being black, cannot help but support Barack Obama because
of their common race. Such a comment belittles Colin Powell. And it labels
Sununu the blatant racist that he is.

These kinds of things will occur again and again over the
next ten days, supposedly to spread the word to those who haven’t heard yet
that Barack Obama was born of a white mother and a black father.

Friday, October 26, 2012

I keep watching the polls as we go down to the final days
before Election Day. Starting tomorrow more states than ever will have opened
their Early Voting polls and I hear that people are going to be early voting in
more numbers than ever.

Barack Obama is the first US president in history to early
vote.

And now they even have exit polls from early voting.

But early voters have been typically motivated voters and
not ones who go to the polls early out of convenience – the whole reason for
early voting in the beginning.

But where you have to start paying attention is at the local
polling in the swing states because nationally it is either a toss-up or a
Romney win. It could just be that we will have another election victory at the
Electoral College.

Here are the national polls as of today:

Gallup: Romney in +5

Rassmussen: Romney in +3

ABC/WaPo: Romney in +1

IBD/TIPP: Obama in +2

In the popular vote, advantage goes to Romney.

But the swing state polls are probably more important to
watch now because the first one to get to 270 electoral votes gets the Oval
Office no matter what the popular vote looks like.

Just ask Al Gore or Thomas Dewey about winning a popular
vote, but losing the election.

Ohio: Obama at +4, +2 and +2.

Colorado: Obama +1

Iowa: +4

Nevada: +3

New Hampshire: +1

Romney apparently has Florida and North Carolina.

Now I’ve seen the scenarios, even ones where the election is
thrown to the House. But the thing I am now wondering about is whether the
Electoral College will pick our next president this time – as it does most every
time, but this time Obama may not get the popular vote. I am steeling myself
for this possibility but in the end, what does it matter. Republicans will no
longer have to worry about Obama getting another term in office. Maybe only
then will they be able to stop all of their nonsense and get back to work
getting our country back on its economic feet.

Unless of course, they are truly as depraved as we all have
come to suspect.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Well that wasn't it, was it? I guess the abortion bullying story wasn't juicy enough. Gloria Allred is out with her October Surprise.

ZZZZzzzzzzzz......

It seems that one of Romney's main donors, Staples CEO Tom Stemberg, got himself a divorce from one of his two ex-wives and Mitt Romney gave testimony in court for his friend, and Allred wants to unseal the court records.

Court records that were thought to be destroyed, unfortunately a whole bunch of people got copies.

No one knows what lies within the testimony but it has been speculated that it might contain some juicy details of Bain Capital's relationship with Staples.

Ho-hum.

As the Examiner, my source so aptly points out, how is any of this going to change anyones' mind? In the previous post, we all know that Romney was, and is, a bully. It is written in the annals of Romney's prep school past.

And we all know that Bain Capital has had a horrible effect on the lives of ex-employees who lost their jobs, health insurance and pensions to the misdeeds of Bain Capital. We all know he put his dog on the roof of his car. We all know that he hired undocumented workers to work on his properties, and that they were summarily fired when he ran for president so they wouldn't be an issue, on say, immigration policy.

And really and truly, if character is a major issue with a voter, then those voters have already made their decision on Romney. Those who are truly still undecided will not be swayed by any revelation in this October Surprise. Because we all know how the low-informed ephemeral voter votes in presidential elections, and it usually involves flipping coins.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Los Angeles family attorney Gloria Allred is apparently
getting ready to unleash her rumored “October Surprise.” And from what I am
hearing about it the potential to undercut Mitt Romney’s campaign at the 11th
hour it should be about as interesting as watching grass grow.

It seems, according to sources, Allred is poised to pounce
to reveal that Mitt Romney is a callous bully. Bullies women no less.

In each case, the offending student was a nonconformist, and
in one case, the student was allegedly gay.

So, umm…this is Allred’s surprise?

I guess we get to find out tomorrow morning when she goes to
court to get Romney’s testimony unsealed, and so we can view the court records
of an event from Romney’s past.Current
speculation is that he bullied a pregnant Mormon woman who needed to abort her
8 week old fetus because of health reasons. She had been given an overdose of
heparin when she had blood clots in her pelvis, and the overdose damaged her
kidneys.

No telling what it did to the fetus.

But apparently Romney, as a church leader, most strenuously
urged the woman not to have an abortion.

And apparently this issue made it to court.

But as I said above, we all know Romney is a bully. He
bullies weaker boys, he bullies canines, and he bullies debate moderators. Now
we hear that he bullies pregnant women.

Really? This is the surprise? Wow. I can’t wait. But I am
torn between reading about this new wrinkle in presidential election politics
tomorrow, and watching the grass grow on my front lawn.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Today is the first day of early voting and I broke my rule of early voting and voted on the first day. I usually give the poll workers a day to shake out the cobwebs in the voting machines. But this time I am not leaving anything to chance. If Jesus calls me home sometime between now and tomorrow afternoon I will be assured that, more than likely, my vote will count.

And in passing down the short sign-in line where I first presented my county-distributed voter registration card, then was about to sign the sticker that the poll worker at the next station was preparing when I heard something that I had never heard before.

The poll worker asked the gentleman in front of me to check and initial a box that stated that he did not have his registration card in his posession.

The gentleman in question presented his driver's licence, a valid form of photo ID as required in the recently overturned Voter ID law passed by the Texas legislature last year. This they accepted, but he then had to initial a statement that he did not have his registration card.

Oh the humanity.

A photo ID, it seems, is not as valid as a county-issued voter registration card.

Sensing that his vote may be in jeopardy of not being counted, the man quickly dove into his wallet and fished out a folded voter registration card of the appropriate yellow color, and he did not, as a result, have to check that box and initial it.

I following behind the gentleman, was not told to initial anything, having presented a valid county-issued voter registration card that did not have on it an image of my face.

Now I suspect that what is behind all of this is that the county got royally messed up in being able to get out new voter registration cards this year because of the court cases on redistricting. I actually had to vote in the primary with my driver's license because I had not received my card by election day. I also signed a statement that I had not received my voter registration card from them yet, and then received it about a month later.

So the speculation is, on my part, that if one cannot at this point produce a valid voter registration card in Fort Bend County, the validity of their current registration is suspect.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

So this morning I sat through most of “State of the Union”
with Candy Crowley in an attempt to hear the woman herself discuss what has
been a hotbed of discussion on the conservative spin shows on Fox. A comment on
whether she was correct to fact check the claims by Mitt Romney that the Obama
Administration took two weeks before it concluded that the attack on the
Benghazi consulate on September 11th was a “terrorist attack.”

And from what I could see, Candy Crowley has moved on. She
didn’t comment. Not on her own news show anyway. CNN, however, has weighed in
here and it is worth a read in advance of the presidential debate tomorrow
evening because Mitt Romney must bring this up again.

He must.

It was a gaffe of the worst kind for Romney to express such
an ill-informed observation. It indicated to me that Romney will tune his
attention to conservative talking heads who often find themselves on the wrong
end of facts and truth. Romney needs to fix this and turn it around to make it
look like he had it correct.I predict
he will, and he will again fail.

I also predict he will attempt to interrupt his way through
the whole thing.

Romney hasn’t a snowball’s chance in HE double hockey sticks
of coming out of this smelling like a rose. The facts are stacked against him.
To come out on top he will have to issue such nitpicky comments that he will be
seen as the pitifully vain man that he truly is. He should take my advice and
simply drop this and go on the attack in other areas, like where was Obama when
Hillary was dodging bullets in Bosnia.

Oh, and yeah, by the time I sit down with my bowl of popcorn
to watch the debate on MSNBC tomorrow evening I will have already cast my vote
for a straight Democratic Party ticket (minus bat crap crazy Kesha Rogers).

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Barack Obama is having fun with a new term: Romnesia. Now I
don’t know who coined the term, some say it was David Korn on “Mother Jones”
although Korn doesn’t think so. Even so, like Big Bird and 47%, the thing seems
to be resonating with voters.

And Mitt Romney is perfectly correct that Obama is playing “Word
Games.” Substance should rule over style and one-liners in any election.
However, I am willing to admit that many voters don’t see it that way,
especially those that are still (astoundingly) undecided. These are the low-informed
electorate that we have all come to know and hate. They wait until they hear
something that resonates and then vote with their gut feelings. So while Romney
is substantively right on this issue, he is wrong on the value of a glib remark
at this point in the campaign.

So to me, it sounds like Romney is grousing that his
campaign cannot come up with a glib remark that doesn’t make him look like a
copycat. It sounds like he is already composing his concession speech.

Now, for those who have not been paying attention, here is a
compendium of the President’s “Romnesia Rag:”

"If you say
you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether you'd
sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia."

“If you say women
should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that
would let employers deny contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.”

“If you say you will
protect a women's right to choose but you stand up in a primary debate and say
you'd be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases,
then you have definitely got Romnesia.”

“If you come down with
a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still
on your website, here is the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing
conditions. We can fix you up. We've got a cure. We can make you well."

Friday, October 19, 2012

So I have been howling at the moon about how Republicans are
drumming up false news that there is rampant voter fraud out there and that we
have tobe super vigilant and require a
Photo ID in order to cast a ballot in our elections. Howling at the moon because
as it has now become apparent to me, voter fraud is actually rampant in this
country.

Rampant.

Take for example the case of Bruce Fleming Bruce is running
for County Commissioner for Fort Bend County’s 1st Precinct.
Flemming, it has recently been revealed, has voted in the past three elections
in not only Fort Bend County, where he lives, but also in Pennsylvania, where
he owns a home.

And in 2008 Fleming voted in the Republican Primary in
Texas, and the Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania

Voting twice in the same election is a Class 3 Felony.

Then there is political consultant Collin Small who was
recently arrested in Virginia for throwing 8 voter registration forms into a
trash dumpster. Small was collecting voter registrations in contract work for
the RNC. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has just thrown
Small under a bus. Obviously it is OK with Priebus to commit voter fraud by
throwing Democratic voter registration forms into the trash, just don’t get
caught.

Then we find that a company called Strategic Allied
Consulting, working in Florida for the Romney campaign registering voters has
been investigated for allegedly registering
dead people to vote.

And in St. Augustine Beach Florida, its former mayor is
bringing charges that a Republican voter has filed to vote in his county, but
doesn’t actually live there, and is using the address of a Florida resident to
vote in Florida, when he actually
lives in Maryland.

Holy Crow. These Republicans were right all along. Voter
fraud is rampant.

Republican voter fraud.

No wonder they were so certain that we had voter fraud in
this country.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

“Actually Mitt is his middle name….I wish I could use my
middle name.”

This is one of the self-deprecating jokes that President
Barack Hussein Obama ripped forth tonight at the Al Smith dinner in New York
City. My president knows how to deliver a line, and how to be classy. His
opponent, Mitt Romney, knows neither.

Mitt Romney, at his funniest, could not be more whiney.
Barack Obama, at his worst, could not be more funny. This is how we must take
measure of these two men: by how much do they take themselves seriously, and
what can you do to further your own cause at a charity fundraiser.

Mitt Romney chose the low road, and sniped. Clearly, he had
no idea how to deliver a joke in this political season. Even George II had a
better idea on how to deliver a line. Romney’s funniest line of the night, that
he was the evening’s designated driver, was ill-delivered because one got the
distinct impression that he was being serious.

Mitt Romney is not ready for prime time. That became very
clear to me tonight. He cannot make light of himself because he is so wrapped
up in himself. Mitt Romney is truly “The Simpsons’” Mr. Burns.

I still cannot believe that there are people out there
seriously considering voting for this non-clown. This man is so humorless, so
fake, so false.

Oh wait, that’s right, Mitt Romney is grist for the mill of
the GOP. He is a poster child for God’s Own Party. The point they all seem to
be missing is that, to me anyway, God has a very incisive sense of humor. He
would awe us all in His one-liners. Mitt, in pretending to follow suit, hasn’t
a clue. Mitt can’t.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Romney's "Binders full of women" comment last night sure does evoke some mental images, doesn't it? My only thought last night was in wondering about the time frame and did Romney really deal with binders?

Couldn't he have converted the binders to a quick and easy reference system like a "Rolodex" file? So 80's.

Here is a sampling of what people with more time on their hands than I have created over the past 20 hours.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

You know, the oft repeated Reaganism, the one that won him
the 1980 election, “are you better off now than you were four years ago,” has
not really served the Romneyites very well. They have tried it out, but the
only thing the question has done this year is to remind people of how they are
indeed much better off than they were in the depths of the Great Recession of
2008-09.

Think about it. People were losing their jobs by the
hundreds of thousands per month. The stock market halved its value. Home sales
plummeted along with home prices. Bank loans were rare as hen’s teeth.

Yes, we are all better off than we were 4 years ago, even if
Republicans are unable or unwilling to admit it.

And this is another piece of good news for the Obama
campaign, that and this new study by Robert Prechter and Deepak Goel of the
Socionomics Institute, a research think tank, Wayne Parker of Emory University
and Matthew Lampert of the University of Cambridge. Their study, entitled “Social
Mood, Stock Market Performance and U.S. Presidential Elections” states the
obvious, that those who preside over Wall Street booms, like the present one
that has the Dow Jones average pushing the envelope ever outward these days,
get re-elected. The converse is also true: those in office during downturns in
the stock market get sent home.

Ask Bill Clinton.

Ask Calvin Coolidge.

In truth, the study covers every presidential contest since
1792 and the results are consistent. I really like this quote:

"'The best single predictor of presidential re-election results that we found was the percentage change in the stock market during the three years that preceded Election Day,' said Emory University’s Goel, adding that the jobless rate 'had no predictive value in any of our tests.'"

But really this study is such old news. Everyone knows that
you don’t question a winning streak, and you don’t bet against a good thing,
because nothing succeeds but success.

And yes, the champagne is on ice. Barack Obama is going to
rock the town hall tonight.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Did you see Rosie Perez' video on Mitt Romney's assertion that he would have a much better chance to win his race if he were a Mexican. Noted Latina actress Rosie Perez is one chica desgraciata at how the Mittster was very flippant in his remarks to a well-heeled audience as they sat and laughed at his wistful remarks, knowing full well that they were meant to be disingenuous.

Rosie Perez basically called El Mittster out onto the carpet and, in her unique PR accent, made it known that he, very probably, lost the election because of this remark.

And if Hispanics have the righteous idignation that Perez does, and flock to the polls, I think she may have had uttered some prophetic words.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Felix Baumgartner won his place in history for being the fastest man alive.

Literally.

Before this we had Joe Kittinger, a retired Air Force test pilot and dare devil who went into freefall from an altitude of 102,000 feet (31,090 meters) above MSL. Kittinger attained a subsonic maximum velocity of 614 miles per hour (275 meters per second).

Felix Baumgartner, aka "Fearless Felix" has just today jumped from a height of 128,000 feet (39,014 meters) and broke the sound barrier having attained Mach 1.2, that is, 833.9 miles per hour or 373 meters per second.

Doing this was only possible because Baumgartner dropped from a higher altitude where the air is thinner and so his terminal velocity, the velocity that occurs when the upward force of air resistance balances the downward acceleration due to gravity, causing a falling object to fall at a constant velocity, occurred at a higher altitude than Kittinger's did.

You Tube is awash with video.

What to do with this? Yes it is a teaching moment, but how to I spin this into the political message of today? Well not today maybe. Maybe after Tuesday I can report that Mitt Romney's numbers are falling faster than Baumgartner.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

If you saw the Vice Presidential debate last week you may have noticed what I noticed because a commenter on the previous posting agreed that Paul Ryan’s TV presence suffered from excessive head bobbing.

So much so, that the commenter Googled it to see if anyone else noticed and found my blog posting.

On the posting I wondered whether anyone would post a montage to You Tube for our viewing pleasure but alas, as of this afternoon there is no video.

Well all of that has got to stop. I put my miniscule video talents to work and extracted some of the more notable head oscillations and compressed them into this brief video.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

So did you see it? I took people to a quick dinner tonight so I could get home and watch my Vice President, Joe “Joltin’ Joe” Biden in a major smackdown over Paul “Bobbin’ Boy” Ryan.

Joe Biden made Paul Ryan look small, but Paul Ryan made himself look even smaller. Ryan continued the Republican meme of, in Joe’s own word, utter malarkey, but this time this was not allowed to be said unchallenged. And I suspect Ryan expected this. I quite often found myself pitying Ryan. I suspect Ryan is not comfortable with shape shifting as much as his running mate is and as a result he looked absolutely stricken sometimes in his refutations – uttering things that he himself knew were untrue.

It came to a head in one of his classic refutations when Ryan exhibited an unnatural case of head bobbing. If I didn’t know better, and I do, Ryan exhibited such rapid head oscillations that one would wonder if he didn’t have a case of Touretts Syndrome. At one time I was seriously concerned that he would emerge from the debate with a serious case of whiplash.

I wonder if someone will capture all of Ryan’s head bobbing and compile them in a You Tube video.

But seriously, Joe Biden was the statesman tonight, and Paul Ryan was the naïf. Joe Biden had the facts, Paul Ryan had the campaign slogans. And this in the end was the risk. Romney could have selected a more mature running mate with a larger world view, but instead he chose the nerdy kid with serious head issues from backwater Wisconsin.

No doubt Joe Biden has restored the respect of some flagging Independent voters tonight. And in so doing, has restored the confidence of Democrats who know we can win this thing.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Sometimes I cannot believe some of the news items I come across. Surely this one or that one comes from The Onion, a website dedicated to Faux News.

But I guess not this time.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, in his quest to get information out to his constituents on a very seriously infected drug that is giving people often fatal cases of meningitis, consulted his rolodex for the “hotline” that has been set up in his state.

An 866 number.

Instead of the public information hotline callers to Scott’s phone number got a phone sex “hotline” of a whole other kind of thing.

Callers interested in finding about the potentially fatal drug were instead treated to “Hello boys, thank you for calling me on my anniversary.”

What is it about these southern Republican governors? First we hear news of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford disappearing for days “walking the Appalachian trail” with a Brazilian hottie, and now we find Rick Scott sharing his favorite phone sex “hot” lines with his constituents.

Apparently the elected officials in God’s Own Party are having trouble with a few of His commandments.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Mitt Romney is such a good debater, a master debater I might
add, that he can even debate himself on the burning issues of the day and sound
utterly convinced in his convictions, which as you will see when you watch this
embedded video from Daily KOS, has been variable in times past.

Variable as in polar.

Sort of makes John Kerry’s “I voted for it before I voted
against it” comment pale in comparison, doesn’t it?

Monday, October 08, 2012

October 9th 2012 (that's tomorrow): Last day to register to vote for the November Election. If you are a Republican in Texas though, you don't have to register to vote because in Texas you are automatically registered to vote if you vote for the GOP (God's Own Party).

October 21st 2012: First day of early voting, or if you are a Republican you have already voted because you cast your 12 absentee ballots. In Fort Bend County, check the schedule here for times and places. Note that Sunday voting is not doable at many locations so if you want to vote with your fellow parishoners after church you may be just flat out of luck.

November 2nd 2012: Last day of early voting.

November 6th 2012: Election Day. Or if you are a Republican, it's November 7th.

Now here's the difference between my voting dates and those that are spread by Republican operatives to confuse low-informed Democratic voters. My voting dates, or rather the voting dates for Republicans are meant to be fun and in jest. In Republican information and flyers they are being deadly serious.

Saturday, October 06, 2012

If Mitt Romney could take back one campaign remark which one would he pick? A lot of people would say he'd prefer not to have had the very candid 47% remark committed to video. I am thinking however, that Romney's Big Bird remark is sure to win the take-it-back contest hands down. Never have I seen so many political cartoons put together so fast by so many. Some are pretty darn clever. What I have for your viewing pleasure below is a small sampling of the cartoons that have come out on that one subject. I've even seen some of them shared on Zuckerman's website.

A local Houston TV station had a news item yesterday about a
local congressional race. It seems that the Democratic nominee is running
against a Republican incumbent and she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in H-E-double
hockey sticks of winning.

Gee. No kidding.

Here in Red Texas this news item is about as interesting and
unique as a dog bites man story.

Oh but wait, there’s more, the Democrat in this case is
Kesha Rogers and she wants to impeach Obama for all of his high crimes and
misdemeanors.

Like being a puppet of Elizabeth II.

Like ending the space shuttle program.

We here in the Fighting 22nd as Texas
Congressional District 22 is lovingly referred to by some have experienced The
Kesha before. She was the nominee in 2010 also and got trounced. In that
election I wrote a blog post about how to vote a straight Democratic ticket and
then go back and deselect Kesha Rogers. So I was mildly amused to read in the
KHOU piece that “Democratic activists considered launching a campaign telling
people to vote against her, but they worried confused voters might cast ballots
against other Democratic candidates with similar names.”

The article went on to say that the current plan is to
encourage straight ticket voting.

One way that one could look at that strategy is that no one
expects any Democrats to win any of their races so go ahead and vote straight
Democratic because sending Kesha Rogers to congress is never going to happen.

So despite my blog’smoniker I refuse to give in to this kind of pessimism. Every time I go
in to vote I go to cast my ballot for the winner and then go watch the returns
on MSNBC, fully expecting my candidates to win. That this happens only rarely
doesn’t change things. If I thought my candidates would probably lose I
probably would just give up and not vote.

And so again I am casting my NO on Kesha vote by deselecting
her from my straight Democratic vote. Heck, this year I might go ahead and vote
for the Green Party candidate.